268 (p, 12), then repeated to the girl (po 33)o At least one of the two realizes the situation, but appears unwilling, if even at all able, to do anything about ito Their situation seems even more pitiable than that of Beckett's two tramps: they are not even waiting for anything,, Marriage Poem^ aptly subtitled A Tragi-comedy, is an effective treatment of the familiar marriage-at-the-menopause; not the woman's, but the man's --and consequently the marriage's. The intentional melodrama is reinforced by continuous background music which, as the opening stage directions say, is "heard softly o . o when the dialogue is going on and , e c loudly at every paused The wife has the ubiquitous next-door-neighbor to complain to, and the husband "the other woman" for sympathyo Whether either is real or merely imaginary is intentionally unclear, as each appears in dream-like sequences, fading in and out; of course, the actual physical reality of either is irrelevanto What is important is the existence of the children, who knock on the door at the end, the husband saying, "The children," the wife, "Our children, There is also another couple, bringing out the frustrations and weaknesses of the primary couple, Satyadev Dubey felt the characterization weak in this playo It seems to me that misses the point, for the characters are not important as individuals, but as clear typeSc In all four plays the characters are distinctly and purposely types, for it is the situation that is central and dominant. There is no psychological development; these are not plays of individual character analysis, and that is most clearly seen in the typing involved in The Sleep-walkers The play involves a reception for a visiting American publisher and his wife, grossly (and unfortunately, typically) ignorant about India, and equally as grossly ignorant and uncaring about their ignorancec It is a rich play, and powerful« All the obvious tritenesses and cliches are employed -- but as art, not propaganda There is an American publisher, whose first lines are, "Hi, folks. Call me Ed" (po 84) There's the inveterate writer in Hindi, "India's national language," who's done "one hundred and eighty-seven short stories in Hindi. Also, four hundred and seventeen poemSo In Hindi I am one of the well-known writers" (p, 85)o He is counter-balanced by Miss Ganguly, who does Family Planning plays for the villagers, and observes that "Bengali has the most advanced literature in India o o . according to foreign observers" (p 86) Then there is the professor (with the silent wife) who points out the spiritual and cultural richness of India, which is in contrast to American materialism (and who also has not revised his lectures -- which are actually his college notes -- in twenty years). There is the typical reference to the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation in relation to the population problem, with the suggestion (by the American) that they might "agree to finance a night-club in every Indian village," in order to provide a form of entertainment besides that of copulation (p. 94)o (Here one is reminded of the story of a few years back, probably apocryphal, of the LLSo institution or foundation that spent hundreds of thousands to publish and distribute birth-control pamphlets in every conceivable dialect, totally unthinking or unaware of the illiteracy factoro)